Inviting noncitizens and felons to vote

Like some 400,000 other Nevadans, Las Vegas resident Erna Barton received a postcard this month from Secretary of State Ross Miller. The card promotes the state's new online voter registration system and encourages recipients to register to vote at www.registertovotenv.gov.

The system is the keystone of the Democrat's drive to shrink the number of Nevadans who can vote but aren't registered - a figure believed to be north of 600,000. The huge list of postcard recipients was generated from voter registration, Department of Motor Vehicles and federal databases with the goal of contacting eligible, unregistered voters.

But Barton isn't eligible to vote. She isn't a U.S. citizen.

"Honestly, I get jury duty summons as well," she said last week. "I tell them I'm not a U.S. citizen and that's it, I'm good to go. But nobody wants to do jury duty, and there are big stakes in this election. There's such a push on people to go, go, go and vote. Something like this (postcard) can have an influence on people. Both parties are so dependent on turnout this year."

Barton is proud to be Dutch and doesn't want to give up her Netherlands citizenship. She's a legal permanent resident with a green card, a Social Security card and a Nevada driver's license. She and her military husband have lived in the same house for more than 16 years.

"There are plenty of people like me," she said. "It's clear they have no system in place to cross-reference those names with immigration status. Why is that not on file?"

Her story got me wondering how many ineligible voters might have received a state-sponsored solicitation to register to vote in November's election.

I talked to Scott Gilles, Nevada's deputy secretary of state for elections. He couldn't explain how Barton's name made it through multiple databases without being flagged. Gilles said the Department of Motor Vehicles is supposed to have data related to immigration status on file.

And what about felons?

"There's no database out there that lists people who have been convicted of a felony and not had their civil rights restored," he said. "We don't have it. Nobody in the country does."

So felons got the postcards?

"We've actually received phone calls from people who've said, 'I'm a felon and I got this card,' " Gilles said. Clerks can offer guidance on how felons can restore their right to vote.

The postcards say "you may (my emphasis added) be eligible to vote," and they say you must be a U.S. citizen to register. But it's in small type, and the qualifiers are dwarfed by the big photo of Miller's handsome mug (getting a head start on that run for attorney general, eh, Ross?).

The registration website has some security measures. Once you choose between English and Spanish (don't even get me started on that), the first screen asks you to confirm that you're a U.S. citizen and warns that falsifying your registration is a felony.

But there really isn't anything to stop an especially motivated noncitizen or felon from registering despite ineligibility. You enter your first and last name, your date of birth, your DMV identification number and the last four digits of your Social Security number. If the information matches up with state and federal records, that's it. You're registered to vote. The signature from your DMV identification card is digitally stored as the signature on your voter registration.

Then you just show up at the polls and vote.

Barton could use the website to register to vote. She says she won't. But what about others like her?

It's true that online voter registration, which is available in just 11 other states, has the potential to save taxpayers a lot of money, make local registrars and state election offices more efficient and improve overall registration accuracy. Ultimately, online voter registration holds the promise of greatly limiting voter fraud nationwide by preventing people from registering in multiple states (some 2.75 million Americans are registered to vote in at least two states); verifying that voters are registered at real addresses; purging the dead from voter registration rolls and preventing fraudsters from registering under the identities of the dead; and most importantly, getting the political parties and shady activist groups out of voter registration entirely.

But all those benefits won't mean a darn thing if steps aren't taken to keep ineligible voters from voting. Anyone who argues that voter fraud is rare and inconsequential isn't paying attention.

We know from "Who's Counting?" - the new book by conservative journalist John Fund and former Bush Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky - that 1,099 ineligible felons voted in Minnesota in 2008. That year, Democrat Al Franken beat incumbent Republican Norm Coleman in a critical U.S. Senate race by 312 votes after a controversial recount.

Franken's win gave Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., the 60th Democratic vote he needed to pass ObamaCare.

We don't know for certain that those felons are responsible for burdening the American economy with ObamaCare, but it's likely. So far, Fund and von Spakovsky report, 177 of those felons have been convicted of fraudulently voting in Minnesota's Senate race, and 66 others are awaiting trial.

If Nevada's online voter registration system can't verify whether new voters are noncitizens or felons, it needs to. And if Nevada can't build the database itself or in cooperation with other states and the federal government, it shouldn't have online voter registration in the first place. It certainly shouldn't invite noncitizens and felons to use the system.

Even in the age of the Internet, some things shouldn't be so easy. We already have early voting. Demanding common-sense verification is not tantamount to voter suppression. Voter participation means nothing without election integrity.

Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is a Review-Journal editorial writer. Follow him on Twitter: @Glenn_CookNV. Listen to him Mondays at 4 p.m. on "Live and Local with Kevin Wall" on KXNT News Radio, 100.5 FM, 840 AM.